PUNDIT PREP: Health care will be among President Obama’s topics at 11: 50 a.m. when he speaks in the South Court of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), and small business owners and organizations from across the country.

EXCLUSIVE -- The president’s message is previewed in a seven-page report, “The Lower Premiums, Stronger Businesses: How Health Insurance Reform Will Bring Down Costs for Small Business,” posting later today at healthreform.gov: “Small businesses, the backbone of job creation in our economy, are disproportionately burdened by the financial strains caused by rising health care costs. … Health insurance reform will lower premiums for small businesses in four important ways. Creates a health insurance exchange. … Provides a small business tax credit. … Ends the ‘hidden tax’ on small businesses that provide health insurance. … Prevents arbitrary premium hikes.” READ IT NOW

It’s Thursday. “Cause I live and breathe this Philadelphia freedom. From the day that I was born I've waved the Pulse.” (h/t: Wanda Moebius Utley) My Phils take Game 1! Deets below.

HOUSE BILL DETAILS: Lawmakers and their aides worked late into the night on the Affordable Health Care for America Act. With nothing set in stone, here’s a look at how the bill is shaping up, according to sources familiar with the discussions. The CBO analysis will show that the bill runs surpluses in the first five years and deficits in the second, making it deficit neutral during the first decade. BUT those late decade deficits were raising questions about whether the CBO will be able to declare the second 10 years deficit neutral. A permanent doc fix will be carved out of the reform bill and introduced separately today without pay-fors. That’s not going to make docs happy because even if the doc fix bill passes the House, the Senate has already killed a similar proposal. Drug makers are also getting shellacked. They’re looking at between $125 billion and $150 billion in cuts – almost twice the $80 billion they agreed to under the White House deal. PhRMA will pay to close the donut hole completely by 2019, dual-eligible and low-income seniors will get drug rebates under Medicare and HHS will gain authority to negotiate Medicare drug prices. To underscore her enthusiasm for dinging the drug industry with the HHS provision, House Speaker Pelosi said during a leadership meeting last night, “I've been smearing poo-poo on it for months.” Pelosi also decided to kill a provision that would have allowed states to set up a single-payer system, which had been considered as a consolation prize for liberals disappointed that a robust public option won’t be part of the bill. There’s also a 2.5 percent tax on device manufacturers. The bill covers 36 million additional people and, depending on how it’s counted, comes in under $900 billion. Pelosi “couldn’t have done a better job of alienating everybody that matters. She did a great job, very equalitarian,” said a health industry lobbyist unhappy with the bill. “Whether or not they get the bill off the House floor is totally dependent on if these industries will let them. … They’ve hit everybody.” The Affordable Health Care for America Act and the doc fix bill are scheduled to hit the House Rules Committee website at 10 a.m. today. Unveiling ceremony on the West Front of the Capitol at 10:30 a.m. with CBO’s analysis following in the late morning or early afternoon.

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MORNING SKED – POLITICO’s Patrick O’Connor has it: “House Democrats will gather tomorrow morning at 9 in the Capitol for a closed-door briefing by party leaders on the health care bill. The official unveiling will occur at 10:30 on the West Front of the Capitol (weather permitting). Yes, it will be a bill, members and aides assured us, and, yes, it will come with a preliminary cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office -- which is NOT an official score. The chairmen who wrote the bill will also host a press call later in the day to walk reporters through the final legislation. The bill shouldn't include too many surprises, according to members and aides briefed on its substance. Minnesota Rep. Tim Walz, who attended a briefing with the speaker Wednesday evening, said the final price tag will come in under the president's target of $900 billion. But others suggest that cost only pertains to the expanded coverage and not the other changes to existing programs, so the official price tag could eclipse the president's goal. Democrats are also supposed to announce that some of the reforms will begin earlier than previously expected, allowing Americans to enjoy some of the benefits of the bill while they start paying for it. (Reporter's note: Like everything else in the health care debate, this, too, is subject to change.)”

OBAMA MEETS WITH LAWMAKERS, per his schedule: The president will meet with representatives of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus on health insurance reform in the Roosevelt Room at 5:05 p.m.

PEAR WATCH – NYT’s Robert Pear: “The new bill, like an earlier version, retains a surtax on high-income people, but increases the thresholds. The tax would hit married couples with adjusted gross incomes exceeding $1 million a year and individuals over $500,000 — just three-tenths of 1 percent of all households, Democrats said. Ms. Pelosi can describe the proposal as a ‘millionaires’ tax.’ The original thresholds were $280,000 for individuals and $350,000 for couples. The government insurance plan would negotiate rates with doctors and hospitals, as private insurers do. Payments would not be based on Medicare rates, as Ms. Pelosi had wanted. Democrats from rural areas balked at the use of Medicare rates, saying they were so low that hospitals could not survive on them. House Democratic leaders will hold a rally at the Capitol on Thursday to promote the legislation. They hope to take it to the House floor next week, with a final vote before Veterans Day, Nov. 11. … House Democrats do not have firm commitments from enough lawmakers to guarantee passage of their bill at the moment. But their aggressive schedule suggests they are confident they can round up the votes they need. … The new House bill would expand Medicaid to cover childless adults, parents and others with incomes less than 150 percent of the poverty level, or $33,075 for a family of four. This goes beyond the earlier House bill and a companion measure in the Senate, which would extend Medicaid to people with incomes less than 133 percent of the poverty level ($29,327 for a family of four). This change saves money. It is less expensive for the federal government to cover low-income people under Medicaid than to provide them with subsidies to buy private insurance.”

$900B OR $1 TRILLION –WSJ’s Vaughan and Bendavid explain: “A spokesman for Ms. Pelosi said the bill will ‘meet the president's target’ of costing less than $900 billion. But the total cost after adding in a change to protect seniors from a gap in coverage for prescription drugs is expected to be more than $1 trillion. The costs are offset by a surtax on high earners and cuts to existing programs.”

LIBERALS COMING ON BOARD -- POLITICO’s Patrick O’Connor: “Even California Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, held her fire when reporters asked her whether she would oppose a health care bill if it allows doctors to negotiate their rates with the government. Instead, she pledged to keep pressing for a stronger version and pointed to the progress liberal lawmakers have made since the summer to include a public plan in the final bill. … But Woolsey, ever the outspoken liberal, shifted the field of debate on Wednesday by claiming to have enough votes in the House to defeat ‘any trigger’ that would impose a public option only if the insurance industry fails to expand coverage and lower their rates – a possible compromise backed by the White House and Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. To that end, she called on President Barack Obama to speak up in support of the public plan. ‘He’s not saying it loud enough,’ she said. Woolsey and other liberals will have a chance to make that point to Obama himself on Thursday when the Progressive Caucus travels to the White House with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and others for a meeting with the president.”

WAITING ON CBO -- WaPo’s Shailagh Murray: “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will unveil a health-care reform bill on Thursday that includes a government insurance option and a historic expansion of Medicaid, although sticking points in the legislation involving abortion and immigration remain unresolved. Senior Democratic House aides said the bill would likely include a version of the ‘public option’ preferred by moderates and may raise Medicaid eligibility levels to 150 percent of the federal poverty level for all adults, a steeper increase than in earlier drafts. The House legislation aims to provide health insurance of one form or another to almost all Americans at an expected cost just below $900 billion over 10 years, without increasing the federal budget deficit for at least 20 years, House Democrats said. Pelosi (D-Calif.) was awaiting official data Wednesday night from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, but was aiming to release the legislation at an event Thursday morning.”

BIZ PUSHES BACK AGAINST SENATE BILL -- WSJ’s Janet Adamy: “Employers are blasting the Senate's plan to create a new public health-insurance program -- a sign of how businesses are becoming increasingly uneasy about Democrats' proposals to overhaul the health system. Lobbyists for employers thought they had staved off a public plan in the Senate after the Finance Committee opted not to include the idea in its version of the health legislation. They were caught by surprise when the public plan resurfaced and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D- Nev.) said it would be in the bill brought to the Senate floor, albeit with an option for states not to participate. President Barack Obama invited a group of small-business owners to meet with him at the White House Thursday. He will make the case that the health overhaul will give them the ability to control health costs. The Business Roundtable, an association of company executives, is calling and visiting lawmakers to persuade them not to include the public plan in the legislation. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday began airing cable-television advertisements in seven states arguing that the public option will lead to higher taxes and increase the national debt.”

HEALTH FRAUD IN THE CROSSHAIRS -- WSJ’s Jane Zhang: “The federal government needs to further step up efforts to fight Medicare and Medicaid fraud to generate more savings to help pay for a health-care overhaul, lawmakers said Wednesday. … Health-overhaul legislation moving through Congress contains provisions to beef up the government's antifraud effort. The U.S. loses at least $60 billion to health-care fraud every year, and some estimates put the cost as high as 10 percent of the nation's total health-care spending, which exceeds $2 trillion. Medicare, the federal insurance program for the elderly and disabled, and Medicaid, the federal-state program for the poor, are especially susceptible. The government has announced a series of indictments on Medicare and Medicaid fraud in the past two years, including indictments earlier this week involving a Mississippi medical clinic.”

GOP TELLS BIZ TO STAND UP -- The Hill’s Alexander Bolton: “Senate Republicans have grown frustrated with large and small business trade associations for not helping enough to oppose the Democratic healthcare overhaul. GOP lawmakers have turned their focus on two groups in particular, the Business Roundtable and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), which they say should be playing a more active role. The Business Roundtable, which represents an alliance of the nation’s top CEOs, responded Wednesday by announcing during a conference call that it would oppose the government-run health insurance plan that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has included in the healthcare bill. Senate Republican leaders on Oct. 20 called representatives from the Business Roundtable, NFIB and other business groups to a meeting at the Capitol to find out what they planned to do during the upcoming Senate floor debate on healthcare reform, according to sources familiar with the session. … Kyl said there are some industries Republicans are disappointed have not taken a more active role in standing up to Democratic plans to pass a $900 billion package that would levy an array of taxes and fees on businesses.”

REID GOING IT ALONE -- CongressDaily’s Anna Edney: “Senate Majority Leader Reid is angling for a favorable CBO score on his health proposals to win support from deficit hawks, even as he keeps those senators, and everyone else, largely in the dark. The secrecy might make sense as a strategy because it prevents an unfavorable score from getting out, but it does not make it easy to nail down senators on their votes on a motion to proceed to the bill. ‘Before he can really make it public, he has to see what CBO says because if CBO says that it's going to be above a certain amount or not be a balanced budget, increase the deficit, he's going to have to resubmit something,’ Senate Democratic Conference Vice Chairman Charles Schumer of New York said. ‘So that's why letting it all out now doesn't make much sense until he gets a CBO score.’ Reid is running the show from here on out, keeping the circle of those in the know extremely tight. … Following a handful of meetings between Reid, Finance Chairman Max Baucus and Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) to negotiate a final bill, an aide to Reid says there are no meetings scheduled. Staffers said Baucus, Dodd, and committee staffers continue to consult with Reid. While the high-level meetings are over, none of the hot-button issues are resolved, aside from the public option Reid went ahead with on his own. That includes how best to make coverage affordable and whether the bill will include an employer mandate, a tax on high-cost insurance plans or a long-term insurance program for the disabled known as the CLASS Act. … Reid sent multiple draft proposals to CBO Monday and plans to ‘cherry-pick the best scores/language and put that in the final bill,’ the aide said.”

KENNEDY INVOKED IN LONG-TERM CARE FIGHT -- Inside Health Policy’s Pecquet and Lotven: “The late Sen. Edward Kennedy's replacement in the Senate called on legislators to support one of the longtime lawmaker's signature health care proposals on Wednesday, as the Community Living Assistance Services and Support (CLASS) Act faces unexpected opposition from key Democrats drafting the chamber's final health reform bill. Sen. Paul Kirk (D-Mass.) said on the Senate floor that the long-term care financing proposal was ‘at the heart of (Kennedy's) efforts to help people’ with disabilities, and urged lawmakers to include the measure in health reform legislation. Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) said Tuesday (Oct. 27) that Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has sent the Congressional Budget Office two version of the health reform bill: one with the CLASS Act, which was included in the health committee health reform bill passed in July, the other without. Supporters of the CLASS Act face hurdles from centrist Democrats. Bayh joined centrist Democrats in an Oct. 23 letter to Reid outlining concerns with the measure, namely that it would create a new entitlement program with ‘large, long-term spending increases that far exceeds revenues.’” $5.

THE GAME: Phils pitcher Cliff Lee throws a complete game in a dominating 6-1 performance over the Yankees in Game 1. Chase Utley homered twice. The only other left-handed hitter to homer twice off a lefty pitcher in a series game was Babe Ruth in 1928.

** The financial costs associated with chronic diseases are high and rising. But many diseases -- including heart disease, lung diseases, and some cancers -- can be prevented. The Triple Solution for a Healthier America advocates a 3-part approach to improve health and lower costs: